Key takeaways
- Starfield has always received mixed reception from players and critics.
- Starfield lead writer Emil Pagliarulo believes that Starfield is in many ways the best game the studio has ever made.
- Bethesda has been improving Starfield post-release, adding ground-based vehicles and now with the release of the Shattered Space expansion.
Starfield's reception has always been a mixed bag. Some people are big fans while others are whole hearted detractors. Regardless, the consensus is more or less that Starfield hasn't lived up to Bethesda's high expectations of being the next big RPG. Shattered Space's release to mixed reviews on Steam also likely wasn't the development Bethesda was trying to nurture with the expansion.
Emil Pagliarulo, Starfield's lead writer and head of design, has always been one of the game's biggest champions. In an interview with GamesRadar+ ahead of Shattered Space's release, the Bethesda veteran maintained his stance on the studio's polarizing space RPG.
“I think, in many ways, Starfield is the hardest thing Bethesda has ever done,” Pagliarulo began. “We pushed ourselves to make something completely different. Just to jam on the Xbox, the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine. When we pull off Starfield, it's a technical marvel. It's also, in many ways, the best we've ever made.” The game, but for us, most importantly, Starfield has its own unique personality, and is right next to Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.”
That's certainly high praise because Bethesda made Morrowind and Skyrim, two genre-defining releases that received near-universal acclaim.
Bethesda continues to improve Starfield
The technical aspects of Starfield are something Bethesda focused heavily on in pre-release marketing and subsequent interviews. A common counterpoint is that these technologically awesome planets aren't particularly fun to explore and many are completely barren. This is something that Bethesda has been trying to address post-release, with the addition of the REV-8 vehicle to quickly explore the planet's surface being one such post-release innovation.
In our interview with Tim Lamb, Starfield's lead creative producer, he said that Bethesda actively listens to community feedback, especially criticism – “We listen to the community, we listen to feedback. But for us, we're our own harshest critics. So, we listen to what the community says.” We're listening, we're looking at what interests us, and we have plans moving forward.”
It is unknown if Bethesda intends to create more expansions after Shattered Space, which has been in active development for over a year.
